


WWLJD (What Would Lou Jitsu Do?)

by word_dissociation



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018)
Genre: Family, Pre-Canon, rottmnt spoilers i guess so watch out for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 22:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/word_dissociation/pseuds/word_dissociation
Summary: “My sons,” He sighed to himself, so as not to wake them. “I really need to give you real names.”





	WWLJD (What Would Lou Jitsu Do?)

**Author's Note:**

> since i can't wait til we get a flashback about lou jitsu/newly mutated splinter getting his sea legs as A Dad, i had to write some myself  
> extremely speculative, also i picture that splinter's mutation didn't kick in right away and kind of happened gradually until he became a complete rat. enjoy !

It doesn’t hit Lou right away what he’s stumbled into; in fact it takes weeks before what it all means finally sinks in.

Sure, he grapples with the fact that he feels betrayed and foolish for trusting Draxum, so easily flattered by him that he was blinded to what he was really planning all along. He, reluctant to admit it, even feels afraid of what will happen next; if he’s found by Draxum as he is now, grappling with his mutation- a mutation he doesn’t know the full effects of yet. He feels confused, and lost, and sick with guilt, completely alone for possibly the first real time in his life.

But he isn’t alone. Carefully tucked in between the meager amounts of clothes he was able to grab, on top of the other limited personal items (mostly fan mail and such, which he tries not to feel vain and stupid for taking), are four turtles.

 

* * *

 

The first few weeks, Lou mostly feels sorry for the turtles.

 

The lack of documentation and funds makes finding any shelter hard enough, but his continuing mutation means not even squatting in some old house or shelter will suffice. He feels relieved, almost like a genius, when he thinks to retreat to the sewers. Lou might not be any kind of expert, but he knows turtles need to be somewhere damp, with lots of water. Sewer water isn’t ideal, obviously, but it’s better than nothing.

It is, however, cold. And if it’s cold for Lou, it’s freezing for the turtles; they instinctively pile on each other, clumsy foot on shell or a hand in the other’s face, but it does nothing to quiet their shivering. Lou piles what clean clothes he has on them, tries to bundle them together, but it doesn’t help much. The oldest of them- Red- is able to move around the most, and with more confidence in his motion than the others, and will often do his hardest to crawl onto to Lou, even wiggle his way under his shirt. So for many nights, Lou scoops up the turtles, cold and clammy as they are, and tries his best to keep them all together and relatively still, and tries to let them sleep. He, himself, does not as much- his guilt is still raw in his mind, and while he knows what he did was the right thing, he worries if he’s saved the four of them just to be unable to keep them alive on his own- but the weight on his chest slowly becomes routine. That, at least, convinces him to close his eyes and rest.

 

* * *

 

Not long after the sewer becomes more of a shelter than a hiding place, Lou’s brain decides it’s fair game to become irritable.

Maybe because he had almost fooled himself into some kind of sense of normalcy; he has, from sneaking above ground, coveted something almost like a home. He has a bed now, bottles of clean water, he even found a beaten up projector that miraculously still worked, which he was more thankful for than the bed and the water combined. Not to mention the most helpful of all, the woman at the pet store counter who wrote down some basic turtle care advice, even though he’s sure he creeped her out with his lurking around and odd gait, all covered up to try to keep himself inconspicuous. She did act like she had dealt with worse; he had to give it up to New York for that.

He is irritable, but he isn’t mad, of course. Getting mad at babies is pathetic and cruel, and getting mad at baby turtles seem doubly so. But he is sleep deprived, developing chronic pains, frustrated with his new physiology, and starting to wonder if he’s going insane. The turtles writhe and cry, probably from the cold and hunger, and Lou really can’t blame them. He feels like screaming and crying himself.

 

“What? What is it?” Lou can’t stop himself from sounding exhausted, picking up Orange, who without fail always wailing the loudest. Thinking maybe it’s the cold, he tucks him in his arm, trying to rock him while managing more of a weak shake. Orange merely shrieks louder, which in turn causes all of his brothers to respond in kind. Lou feels like the sheer shockwave of the noise is going to peel the face from his skin. His head is splitting. Suddenly, Red clamps his jaw around his bare foot, in a bite much more firm and painful than somebody his size should be able to create. The resounding ‘fuck’ probably carries all the way to New Jersey.

 

“Alright, you’re in time out!” He pries Red off his foot, scooping him up beside Orange in his arm. He grabs Purple and Blue too.” You, you, orange, me! All of us need a time out.”

 

Time out is not on their agenda, however. Blue wriggles away from the crook of his arm and starts scrambling up to his shoulders. Orange starts thrashing, trying to follow his older brother’s suite when Lou tries to twist around and grab Blue again, slipping free and clumsily slinking up the back of Lou’s neck. A franticness he has never experienced in his life crushes Lou’s heart in its hands, stopping it dead as he feels Orange slide off, already starting to fall. Almost automatic, he shoulders Purple against Red, lurching forwards on one foot to catch Orange in his free hand. Blood rushes in his ears. Orange squeals in delight and starts wiggling, trying to repeat his steps again.

 

And then it hits him; they’d all been bored. He sighs with relief.

 

“You think that’s funny, do you?” He scolds, though there is absolutely no bite to his words, and he is, in spite of himself, smiling. “Giving me a heart attack?” He collects Blue from his spot on his shoulder, and sets them all down gently. There is a slight murmur of disappointment, then Lou picks up Orange, in a smooth motion, spinning him around high into the air. Not long after the other three are tripping over each other, tugging at Lou’s ankles.

 

Lou lifts them up, gives them piggy-back rides, and generally resigns himself to being a playground for hours. Somehow, it feels like the most fun he’s had in decades.

 

* * *

 

Lou, after spotting a gray hair (hair, not strand of rat fur), decides it’s time to pass on the greatest staple of his legacy: grooming.

The turtles are hairless, obviously, put playing in sewer grime is no good; nobody under his watch is going to go on smelling like the inside of a rusty pipe and growing mildew on their shells. Even though turtles are supposed to love water, Lou has never met any living thing more opposed to baths than the turtles. Worse yet, it’s getting hard to rope them all in.

Orange is still getting his legs under him, really, so he is the easiest to catch, though he protests the loudest in wordless, floundering terror. This alerts his presence to all of his brothers;  Blue has mastered his crawl, sliding half on his belly as his kicks and wriggles away faster than anything with a shell on its back should be able to. Purple uses his scrawniness to hide in corners and under the bed frame, making it difficult for Lou to reach. Red has grown bigger than Lou thought he would, and much quicker than he thought he would, too, and is able to toddle around on two legs. Lou feels like an idiot chasing after him while he screams “No!” over and over again. He gnaws on Lou’s arms all the way to their makeshift tub, a large bin that, while big enough for all of them, is beginning to be a tight fit with Red’s growth spurt.

Still, the turtles all try to kick and splash around as Lou scrubs them all down, stilling only when he washes the spaces where their shells meet the skin just under their collarbones. Washing their face causes a lot of grief, especially from Blue, who has not yet totally learned to keep his eyes closed so soap won’t in them. After he gets them all in the rhythm of it, though, they calm down; Orange blows bubbles at his brothers, Purple climbs up Red’s spines to keep himself afloat better, and Blue splashes the water in front of him, amazing himself. Lou then has to convince them to get _out_ of the tub just as much as he had to convince them to get in.

 

He knows the second he sets them loose, they’ll waste no time getting just as dirty as before. But looking at them, grouped together, bundled up to their nostrils in towels, he only feels a kind of tired satisfaction.

 

* * *

 

When their personalities really start to emerge, that’s when Lou realizes he’s not just Lou, by himself, with some turtles who he makes sure don’t all die. Previously it had seemed more like what he imagined was the normal, random behavior of babies, with the secondary turtle instincts of course, but day after day, the turtles make their own distinctions perfectly clear.

 

Red, as the oldest, is the first he really notices. Though not able to do much more than babble nonsense, it’s easy for Lou to tell he has a lot of Strong Opinions about things, as much as a baby turtle living in the sewer can have. He’s gotten over his teething, but doesn’t seem to understand the force he puts behind his movements all the same; hence when he starts to roughhouse with his brothers, Purple either shuffles away or is discreetly moved away by Lou himself. And does he ever love to roughhouse; even sitting in front of the reruns of Lou’s movies, he moves along, sloppily and uncoordinatedly trying to mimic the kicks and punches. More often than not, he clumsily ends up hitting himself in the face.

 

(Lou was worried, at first, at showing them; less out of the conceit of babies not grasping the masteries of cinema, but more worried if they would recognize his face when they grew up, now so far removed from what it once was? What would he tell them? How could he explain?)

 

Purple was curious, even notably for a baby. He began hoarding things, sneaking junk under Lou’s bed, sometimes in the sheets (the amount of times Lou had rolled over the jagged edge of some something or other in his sleep, he swears). He was beginning to form into a little drama king, too, throwing himself on the floor and wailing like he’d been shot when Blue stole a toy he was playing with, giving Lou a heart attack every time thinking he’d broken his shell. Lou tied a pillow around his back, which he would sometimes try to wiggle out of, but more or less learned to use to his advantage.

Blue was dramatic himself; not as much as Purple, but enough that Lou couldn’t help but laugh at him sometimes. He was more clingy than his brothers were, pitching a fit if he were ‘alone’ for more than four seconds, finding no issue in simply shoving Purple, Orange, or Red out of the way to get Lou’s attention. Lou figured he was well on his way to becoming a life-long antagonizer, but he supposed, while they were all so little, it couldn’t do much harm- he simply couldn’t intervene _every_ time he swiped toys or tried to ride his eldest brother like a horse.

Orange, being the youngest, was not as obvious as the others, but he was beginning to show the startings of his personality. He still insisted Lou carry him most of the time (probably because he kept tripping over his shell and ending up stuck on his back), and he scared easier than the others, but there was no doubt in Lou’s mind how attached to the other three he was. Near-inseparable, really- crawling on Red’s back, teething on the edges of Blue’s shell, clumsily rubbing his hands all over Purple’s face, if at least one of his brothers were present, he was not far behind. It made him the easiest to find, if nothing else, and the one to get in the least trouble, much to Lou’s relief.

 

And in spite of their differences in personality, all of them loved Movie Time.

 

Lou had found a chair- an amazing chair, who would throw out such a good chair?- thrown into the sewer on night, and had immediately taken it home. A full recliner, padded, with a pillow sewn in and everything. And usually, after breakfast, lunch, lunch two, dinner, or in the middle of the night when none of them would sleep, Lou would sit in his chair, turtles piled on him, and watch a version of himself captured in fuzzy technicolor that he simultaneously was envious of and relieved to see. The turtles themselves would come rushing whenever they heard the projector whirr to life. Red had even almost said “hot soup” one time, which made Lou cry in earnest, despite himself.

And as he sat there, watching the last shot fade to credits, stealing a look down to see the turtles had fallen asleep- as he figured they would- Lou realized something that he should have realized the second he had stepped foot in the sewer, the four of them cradled in his arms. He, without even knowing it, had become a father.

 

“My sons,” He sighed to himself, so as not to wake them. “I really need to give you real names.”


End file.
